


Little Talks

by CheshireMoon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Character Death, Gen, Hospital, Major Illness, Mentions of Cancer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 02:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4329879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheshireMoon/pseuds/CheshireMoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And some days I can't even dress myself<br/>It's killing me to see you this way</p>
<p>'Cause though the truth may vary<br/>This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore</p>
<p>~'Little Talks' by Of Monsters and Men</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Talks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RexxieConverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RexxieConverse/gifts).



Dean stared at the ceiling and hoped it would collapse in on him. Castiel stared at Dean and hoped he would finally see him.

Neither got their wish.

Cas waited for some sort of improvement as the days went by. He watched Dean closely, looked for the darkness in his eyes to lessen. It never did. In those few spare hours a night in which Dean slept, Cas watched over him. He watched the nightmares bloom in his chest. He listened to the shattered sounds of a man who was not so much breaking as already broken. And the worst part was that Cas was incapable of waking him from black dreams that gripped him.

Dean waited for death. He did not wait for it like a man who had accepted a different path. He waited for it like a beggar waits for food. He craved it because it was his last salvation. He had nothing and no one but himself.

Sam visited, of course. As often as his schedule allowed. He would talk endlessly about his days. Whatever new client he had, what he and Jessica had been up to. Sam talked as if he could erase his brother's pain with words alone. He talked like he could fix the cracks in Dean's soul. He hoped his words would somehow banish the emptiness that had taken hold in Dean's chest. He talked to fill the silence that surrounded Dean's hospital bed. Though, of course, the room was never completely silent. Not with the whir of the machines that worked to prolong Dean's fragile life. Not with the eternal song of the monitors, ticking away his heartbeats like they still mattered.

The sterile hospital room always felt so damned empty. It didn't matter if all three of them were there, because Castiel didn't count as a presence anymore.

_Late stage osteosarcoma._

_The cancer was literally in his bones. It had integrated itself into the very deepest part of him. Dean lay awake, listening to Castiel’s quiet breathing. He was trying his best not to rip his own skin away. His bones ached. They burned. They itched. They were weak._

_Last stage osteosarcoma._

_He’d had the diagnosis to consider for quite some time, but it still sounded foreign to him. Foreign and as poisonous as the drugs meant to keep him alive._

_Late stage osteosarcoma._

_He didn’t dare ask the doctors for a time estimate. That would make it more real. Every time they tried to tell him, he cut them off abruptly, going so far as leaving the room if necessary. He would fight it, but he didn’t want a timeline of any sort._

_Late stage osteosarcoma._

_Somewhere in the house, those damned stairs creaked. He wished he could say that was what was keeping him awake. Dean wanted to get up and pace off his restlessness, but his legs hurt too much. He tried turning onto his side to face Cas, but ended up on his back again. His shoulders hurt. The cancer was in his shoulders. His legs, his hips, the lining of his chest. It was everywhere._

“ _Late stage osteosarcoma.” The words felt brittle in his mouth as he whispered them into the night._

“ _Dean?” Cas asked from beside him. Dean turned his head to the side, frowning._

“ _Didn’t mean to wake you,” he said quietly, trying to hide the hitch in his breathing, the glass in his chest, the dust in his lungs._

“ _Dean, are you okay? Are you in pain?” The bed was jostled as Cas sat up, flicking the lamp on. Dean blinked quickly against the onslaught of light. He didn’t realise he was crying until he realised that the ceiling was a blur. That didn’t matter. He was overly familiar with the ceiling anyway. Several ceilings, in fact. It had become commonplace for him to have nothing to do but stare at the ceiling._

“ _I’m fine,” Dean lied. Cas came into view, features a streak._

“ _Dean,” Cas began._

“ _I’m fine!” He tried to find strength to put into his words, but failed. His words fell flat and shattered._

“ _You don’t have to pretend, do you know that?” Cas asked. “I’m here. I’m going to be here. Nothing will change that, please understand that, Dean.” There was an imploring tone to his words. “Please don’t close me out. I’m here.”_

_I’m here._

_Nothing will change that._

_I’m here._

“I’m here,” Cas whispered helplessly to Dean’s prone form. He sat on the edge of Dean’s hospital bed, day in and day out. He ran his hands over Dean’s chest, caressed his face, touched his hand. Not that Dean ever felt it. Cas could no longer lift Dean’s hand, press his lips to the back of it. He would never again take Dean’s arm and wrap it around himself.

Not that he hadn’t tried.

He’d been trying since he died. Some part of him believed that if he tried hard enough, he could make Dean hear him. Cas needed to apologise. Dean had been left all alone while his body consumed itself. Cas had left him to his brittle bones and broken heart. His carelessness had left Dean alone to fight off the malignant pieces of himself.

One. Two. Three. That’s all it had taken. Three steps. Three tired, heavy steps. He missed the top step, his heel slipped and he was falling. He reached for anything that he could grab onto, but none of that mattered. There’s little a railing can do against the snapping of a neck. At least he was in a hospital.

Because the stairwell was isolated and because most people took the elevator, his body remained there for several hours before it was found. Cas wasn’t there when it was found. He’d barely given himself time to register his own death before rushing to Dean’s hospital room. He rushed to his side, touched his face, tried to lift his hand. Atlas couldn’t have lifted the weight. Whispering, screaming, it hadn’t mattered. Dean couldn’t hear him.

No one could.

He had been there to see Dean get the news. Cas had witnessed the very moment in which Dean’s heart had died. And there wasn’t anything he could do about it. And so Castiel watched over him. A silent guardian. No, guardian wasn’t the right word. That would imply that he could help Dean, which he was powerless to do.

Castiel was nothing.

And so the days went by. Dean’s health did not improve. He stopped fighting the moment he found out about Cas’ accident. What was the point anymore? The only one who could convince him to fight was dead. Hope had been abandoned as quickly as Dean had.

“ _Dean, please.”_

Silence. The beeping that indicated that Dean’s heart was still beating. The treacherous thing.

“ _I’m sorry.”_

Every part of Dean felt as though it would never cease to hurt.

“ _Please, don’t give up. Keep fighting.”_

Dean asked how long he had for the first time.

“ _No.”_

Sam’s visits became shorter. He didn’t know what to say anymore. The silence was deafening, and Sam couldn’t speak above it.

“ _God, take anyone but him. You took me, isn’t that enough?”_

Dean started to pray to a God he didn’t believe in that he could just die already. He grew weary of taking up the space he was in; the small hospital bed that had become his entire world. Dean knew that he was dying, that he was wasting away. It would be easier if he could just hurry up and die.

“ _It’s killing me to see you this way.”_ Castiel laughed without humour at a joke that nobody could hear. Dean’s broken heart was plain to see to anyone who looked. What about Castiel’s?

But then, of course, Castiel’s heart wasn’t busy working too hard. The pieces of Dean that were trying to live were being suffocated by the pieces of Dean that wanted him to die. Each beat of his heart, no matter how unwanted, was a struggle. They were waiting for his heart to stop.

The doctors had warned him against any sort of exercise, even walking. Whenever he needed to go somewhere, he required a wheelchair. “If you overwork your heart, then it will stop completely,” they told him.

“What if I want it to stop?” The question had almost passed his lips, but he decided it wasn’t worth it. The idea wouldn’t leave him though. It filled the black hole that his mind had become. It would be so easy. All he would have to do is go for a walk. Or maybe even a run. Dean hadn’t been able to run in so long. He shied away from the plan for awhile at the thought of the pain in his legs should he try it. That concern melted away as the days continued to meld into each other.

Cas could see the intention in his eyes. It was the first spark in the darkness in a long time. He sat in a plastic chair in the corner of the room and watched Dean. He would be there with him until the end.

“ _I’m here, Dean.”_

All he had to do was get himself disconnected from his monitors and machines.

“ _I always have been."_

He wouldn’t have much time before they came rushing in.

“ _I always will be.”_

Just a little walk, maybe a jog down the hallway. Just enough to stop his broken heart.

“ _I will be there to catch you.”_ Cas got to his feet, watching the initiative rush through Dean’s limbs.

Dean’s lungs protested as he sat up. How long had it been since had sat up? His head spun.

“ _So take my hand, I’ll walk with you, my dear.”_ Cas crossed the room, laid his hand upon the back of Dean’s.

The monitors screeched as Dean pulled everything from his matchstick thin arms. Cas took his hand, even though Dean couldn’t feel it. He would feel it soon. The screams of the alerts were overwhelming. Dean felt like he was drowning in his own lungs, devoured by the pressure of his heart already working too hard. Somehow, he made it to the hall before the nurses or the doctors had come. They still saw him.

“Sir! Sir, please go back to your room! You shouldn’t be up and about!” The words seemed hollow to Dean. He ignored them.

One. Two. Three. That’s all it had taken. Three tired, heavy, hurried steps. His heart skipped its first step, and then his vision slipped and he was falling. And Cas was there to catch him.

_I’m here._

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts? Find me @sammylied on Tumblr.


End file.
